Joachim Marx

Artist Statement:Trained in academic and classical painting at the New York Academy of Art and in my native Germany, I explore the edge between figurative and abstract painting. Can the figure be used just as any abstract shape and what does the figure add? My paintings are about the process of applying paint, mediums, pigments, metals and other materials, such as an underlying pattern of a tapestry or instant coffee. I am interested in surfaces that are complex. The paintings juxtapose transparency and depth against texture and flatness. Constructed perspectives suggest space; indeterminable scale is played against the scale of a figure. I consider my work generally abstract, although many paintings contain figures, at times classically painted or drawn, at other times reduced to essential lines. Although mostly treated like an abstract pictorial element, the figures do add another dimension to the work that invites interpretation.